I had a wonderful year! I found WmW (or should I say, you found me), I learned how to build web sites, AND my site is climbing up the serps very nicely. More importantly, I am finally making some money!!!

2001 was the best year I've had in a very long time and I'm hoping 2002 will be even better.

>>>>Everyone seems to be upset about almost everything related to website traffic.

actually i'm with you mike, i've been really pleased with these last few months of my web presence and i plan to do whatever it takes in 2002 too.

i'd add that as a retailer my internet sales have grown in the last 2 years from nothing to something i'm rightly proud of. i can't compare to the ease of 1999 because i wasn't in the game then.

i've gone from a basic html version of a catalogue using free webspace and having no visits and no sales, to a cluster of themed sites (all work in progress of course) which i've worked like hell on and now get decent traffic and sales... my belief is that there is a LOT of room for the smaller people who are willing to learn, adapt and impliment quickly, this is what gives us the edge over bigger more muscly but slower competitors.

i started at an adult education "learn basic html" course in nov '99 having only just (knowingly) touched a computer for the first time, my inspiration since has been elsewhere, and once i realised there "was more to it" (about jan 01) i've experimented and researched and failed and succeeded, but i've gone in the right direction.

i'd say get access to your log files, reseach as much as possible in any way you can, if you can't program (like me) there are a ton of freeware and cheap shareware applications which can be used in all kinds of ways to help (i've spent many hours just looking throu listings at dave central looking at stuff like a child in a sweetshop)

it can work, you can do it successfully like i have, i think its a given that internet traffic in one form or another will increase year on year for a while yet, and why can't you and me have a slice of the action, i think its also a given that what works today may well not work tommorow, be prepared to change and not moan about it.

i'm not showing off (i feel sure that most pro's here earn more money than me - if thats how you measure success) but just showing its possible to make good progress.

I suppose the doom and gloom is a bi-product of some of the majors falling and everyone becoming heavily reliant on Google.

Difficulty to diversify and spread the risk these days results in many feeling insecure!

One thing wont change. More and more people will require help in finding what they are looking for on the web and if this was a race, I would back the folks at WMW to get those eyeballs to their sites ahead of the competition.

I had a great year as well. I discovered this forum and began learning the art of SEO.

I would like to thank everyone on the board for their excellent posts..In Jan 22 2001, my hobby site was listed in Zero Search engines.

<boasting on>

Today it's on the first page of my one word target keyowrd of google,MSN,FAST,LycOS,Yahoo(through web search), hotbot, Ask,Aol/Netscape etc.

This also makes my site a hot magnet for metas..

Thanks to tips from the people here, I'm even listed in Looksmart through Zeal, ODP, even overture and direct hit has began to generate hits.

It's listed number 1 or 2 on even longer keywords.

<boasting mode off>

Sure I don't get ten of thousands of hits like most people here, and mine is a rather obscure keyword, still ..

I'm getting bored though, perhaps it's time to starting competeing in a more competitive area. Perhaps targeting "Free chess download" would be harder and generate a lot more hits than targeting a obscure COmputer chess program..